State officials Thursday announced a $120 million project to build a submarine optical fiber cable system that will connect the Hawaiian Islands and expand high-speed broadband internet access.
The Hawaiian Islands Fiber Link will be open to all carriers and
designed to be robust enough
to support all kinds of telecommunications traffic, including the
expected future high-capacity demands of health care, education, research, public service, commerce and government, officials said.
The new network not only
will likely lead to faster streaming opportunities, but will back up
or replace existing interisland
fiber systems that are aging and vulnerable to outages.
The public-private partnership was announced by the University of Hawaii, which will oversee the project.
Ocean Networks Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, will build the undersea cable network, which aims to be ready for service in December 2026.
The company will be responsible for supply, construction, operations and maintenance of a system that will have landing sites on Oahu, Hawaii island, Maui, Kauai, Lanai and Molokai.
When it goes online, the fiber-
optic network will be able to process a high volume of data with minimal delay and be what officials are calling the interisland backbone of Connect Kakou,
the state’s broadband initiative, which seeks to make access to reliable and affordable high-speed internet service available to everyone in the islands.
Gov. Josh Green appointed Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke to lead Connect Kakou, a collaboration with UH, the Hawaii Broadband and Digital Equity Office, the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and multiple other state and county partners.
“This is part of our plan to guarantee the state’s internet connectivity,” Luke said in an interview. “In the last few years, we’ve become aware of how important connectivity is, and we have over $500 million in federal grants, state funds and private funds available to make sure everyone has access.”
The state’s Five-Year Action Plan for broadband calls for universal service across Hawaii by 2027.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, about 10,000 households in Hawaii do not have internet service, and about 1 in 10 households report having no internet access at home.
Half of the undersea cable funding will come from a federal infrastructure grant from funds approved by Congress and President Joe Biden to help lift the nation’s economy following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The remaining funds will be secured by Ocean Networks through private equity and secured debt.
The idea to build a new interisland cable has been circulating for years. The state currently has three operational carrier-owned and operated interisland fiber systems, two of which are past the end of their planned service lifetime. The other is over halfway through its planned service lifetime.
“This puts the State in an immediate and dire need to construct a new inter-island fiber system with the capacity to sustain the State for transformational decades to come with reliable and affordable broadband access for all,” according to the state’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program Five-Year Action Plan.
In 2019 one of those undersea fiber cables lost its connection, leaving Kauai without internet access for a day.
“Imagine what would happen if the rest of the state lost internet connection,” Luke said, adding that the effects likely would be highly damaging and costly across all sectors.
The Research Corp. of the University of Hawaii put the project out to bid in August and awarded it to Ocean Networks in September.
Cliff Miyake, the company’s vice president of business development, said the past few months were spent negotiating various terms and conditions of the project.
Miyake, who was born and raised in the islands and travels between Hawaii and Atlanta, said the system will be built with the latest technology for faster streaming and the least amount of delay. When completed, it will include 442.5 miles of undersea cable with 24 fiber pairs, each pair able to carry a minimum of 18 terabytes per second.
“It’s really going to be good for the state,” Miyake said. “The total system would be 432 terabytes of data per second. Three hundred to 400 terabytes of data per second would allow about 17.5 million people streaming high-quality videos at the same time.”
The cable landings were designed to have different landing points than the other systems’ undersea cables, which will add to the state’s connectivity resilience.
The new project, with
a designed life span of 25 years, is being overseen by the UH System Office for Information Technology with support from the Research Corp. of the University of Hawaii.
Garret Yoshimi, UH vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said he was pleased to be working with Miyake and company.
“The Ocean Networks team has significant industry experience, specifically working here in Hawai‘i,” he said in a news release.
